The Second Tribulation

My mother seemed to be possessed by a ghost. She repeatedly touched the fist-sized pearl and said, “Auntie Liu, you are far too polite. Although the command of the parents and the words of the matchmaker are important, we still have to wait until the children grow up and take a liking to each other before anything can be decided. I cannot promise you this. If the child grows up and blames us, that would be terrible.”

The wrinkled old woman did not get angry. She smiled at me and said, “Madam Chen, please rest assured. My granddaughter will definitely be a peerless beauty in the future. She will absolutely be a match for your boy. Apart from a beauty of our Liu family, no one is worthy of your son. In addition to these seven pearls, there will be other great rewards.”

Hearing this made me even more anxious. My eyes widened, and I wanted to shout out, but I simply couldn’t make a sound.

At this time, my mother still just chuckled cheerfully. “No rush. We will talk about it when the child grows up.”

Seeing that she could not convince my mother, the wrinkled old woman did not force the matter. She said, “Then we shall talk about it in a few years. You just watch my performance. I will leave one pearl behind first as a token.”

After saying this, the wrinkled old woman left.

The color slowly returned to my mother’s face, and she said, “Gousheng, your mother knows she ran into a ghost wall. When it got dark and I was coming back, I met that old woman, and she instantly cast a spell on me. But all these years, I have remembered your master’s words. Whenever it involves your marriage contract, I remain completely clear-headed deep down, and no one can delude me. At least I managed to send that strange old hag away.”

I felt a surge of joy in my heart; my mother was truly amazing.

My mother placed the jade pendant and the night-luminescent pearl together. She said we would make plans after my master arrived.

When my father came home, my mother told him about the incident.

Remembering that the wrinkled old woman’s eyes were wrong, I wanted to tell my father about it.

My father broke out in a cold sweat. He said a rooster’s eyelids grow from below, and only in extremely rare cases do they grow from above like a human’s. But snakes have no eyelids at all, only a thin membrane, so they cannot blink like humans do. The wrinkled old woman who came to our house tonight might very well be a snake demon.

Living in the Yangtze River basin, we had never heard rumors of the Five Great Immortals of the Northeast. Only later did I learn that the Hu, Huang, Bai, Liu, and Hui were known as the Five Great Immortals in the north, and they belonged to a category of supernatural entities that were part demon and part immortal. Although they had established themselves in the north, it did not mean they only appeared there.

My father and mother believed that the snake demon who came this time was better than the fox demon from years ago, since she hadn’t used any vicious methods.

At this point, my father remembered my master’s instructions. The three great tribulations of Heaven, Earth, and Man, and the three barrier-calamities of Gods, Ghosts, and Demons occurred once every seven years. I was seven years old this year, so it was about time for the second tribulation to arrive. The first heavenly tribulation had taken the lives of the four feng shui masters. Whether we could safely cross this second “earthly tribulation” was still unknown, and people might very well die.

He then told me to try not to go out during this period, to make sure I returned home before the sun went down at the very least, and not to go play on Qinglong Mountain.

I nodded and kept his words in mind.

After a few days, I quickly forgot about the wrinkled old woman. However, I occasionally felt as if something was following behind me. But whenever I turned around to look, there was nothing there.

For a period of time, I dreamed of a young girl dressed in red. She had a snake’s body and a human’s head, and she coiled around me. Wearing her hair in little braids, she asked, “Gousheng, let’s play house, okay? You be the husband, and I’ll be the wife! We’ll have lots and lots of babies in the future.”

In the dream, my head spun, and I was completely dazed. The red-dressed girl’s face was actually very beautiful, but her body was in the shape of a snake. It was strange and bizarre, so I naturally did not dare to agree.

After another period of time, it was autumn, the busy farming season. My parents were occupied with farm work and did not let me go out. They only had me heat up the lunch every day at noon and deliver it to the fields, making sure I went and returned quickly right in the middle of the day.

This day at noon, I finished delivering lunch to my parents and headed home.

As I passed the entrance of the village, Old Bai Gan called out to me. Reeking of alcohol, he said in a teasing tone, “Little puppy, little monster, don’t you greet people when you see your Uncle Bai? Come over here and let Uncle Bai flick it.”

Old Bai Gan was an old widower who was lazy and loved to eat. When everyone else was busy with farming, he was the most idle. He liked to scare little children on normal days, and the timid ones would burst into tears from his fright. Sometimes when he was drunk, he liked to tease children even more, and flicking a boy’s crotch was one of his worst habits.

I glanced at him, not fearing him at all, and said, “Old Bai Gan, you are the puppy, you are the monster.”

Old Bai Gan’s face instantly changed, and he reached out to grab me. I dodged quickly, and when Old Bai Gan failed to catch me, he immediately threw a kick at me.

Although I tried to dodge, I was still struck by his right foot and fell straight to the ground. It hurt so much that I couldn’t speak for a long time.

Old Bai Gan bared his teeth, letting out a proud laugh, spat a glob of thick phlegm, and cursed, “You little puppy, you deserve to die. You jinx, you bringer of bad luck, you should have been bitten to death by foxes seven years ago. Your ancestors took over the feng shui treasure land of Qinglong Mountain. Sooner or later, I will dig up your ancestors’ bones. Only the Bai family deserves to enjoy such good feng shui. Just looking at you makes me want to wring your dog head off.”

The Bai family had moved to Chen Village later on, but they had multiplied well, so their numbers were larger, gradually overshadowing the Chen villagers. Old Bai Gan had the confidence to be arrogant.

After all, I was just a child and had no way to fight him head-on. I gave Old Bai Gan a fierce glare, got up, endured the pain, and ran away as fast as my legs could carry me.

However, by noon the next day, a bizarre thing happened.

The right leg that Old Bai Gan had used to kick me turned black and rotted away, emitting a foul stench. By nightfall, he hanged himself from a roof beam.

His nephew, Bai Dabiao, came to look for Old Bai Gan after dinner. Shining his flashlight inside, he discovered the hanging figure and realized something had happened. He hurriedly invited the village funeral master to shroud the body.

The eerie part was that a black snake slithered out from Old Bai Gan’s mouth. The crotch of Old Bai Gan’s pants was stained red over a large area.

The village funeral master forced down his terror, pried open Old Bai Gan’s mouth, and found that his tongue had been bitten off by something. He reached out to feel his crotch and found that the thing was gone too, leaving only some scraps of flesh.

“He ran into a ghost!” The funeral master subconsciously squeezed his legs together, terrified out of his wits. Before leaving, he said he had never encountered such a thing in his life.

Left with no choice, Bai Dabiao spent a large sum of money to invite Master Cai, a powerful feng shui and yin-yang master, from the town overnight.

This Master Cai was quite famous. He knew how to use a Lu Ban ruler and carried an ink marker, holding a grand reputation across the surrounding villages.

It was said that he could act as a spiritual medium and possessed the ability to traverse the yin and yang realms. There were even rumors that he had handled cases of reanimated corpses. He was bold enough to spend the night in a graveyard hill; in short, he was very capable.

Generally speaking, Master Cai was hard to invite. His appearance fee started at over a hundred yuan, he smoked Qianmen cigarettes, drank bottled wine, and required a large bowl of roasted meat on the table for every meal.

But this time, he agreed very readily. He selected the auspicious hour as quickly as possible and placed Old Bai Gan into the coffin.

When night arrived, another strange thing happened.